There is a cynical stream of consciousness stalking the Indian landscape, angry and angst-ridden, seething with disgust at the web of corruption which has trapped the regime, the system, and Indian democracy. Shifting moments in public perception, or the apolitical stance of a vacillating middle and upper middle class, cannot really provide that Machiavellian moment of relief to the regime, when it might still appear to be democratic, even as it actually operates on multiple undemocratic paradigms.

No sophistry, no jugglery in figures can explain away the evidence that the skeletons in many villages present to the naked eye. I have no doubt whatsoever that both England and the town dwellers of India will have to answer, if there is a God above, for this crime against humanity, which is perhaps unequaled in history. The law itself in this country has been used to serve the foreign exploiter. My unbiased examination of the Punjab Martial Law cases has led me to believe that 95 per cent of the convictions were wholly bad.

As I write this, the blackout is breaking, and so is the curfew in our television and newspaper spaces. They will have to break it. They can't block it anymore. This censorship will be broken. They can't hold these perverse barricades of information into a corked bottle full of newsy fizz, blocked in their rotting conscience and five-star power corridors, shamelessly blasé, perversely thick-skinned, eternally at ease. It's like The Club, in a Gestapo-like, sinister, collective manoeuvre, has redefined the political economy of silence and censorship.